The Freshman
Killing Sunday and making Buffy into a very small fish.
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: The Freshman was the start of a new era for the show. What kind of path were the writing team trying to lead Buffy and the Scooby Gang down as the season commenced?
Doug Petrie: Well, it was all very deliberate and all very much from the marvellous brain of Joss Whedon. We referred to it throughout the filming as 'The Pilot', actually, because it seemed that much like a whole new series. It was a very large reintroduction to our series, to our characters and to their situations.
Joss was very clear on wanting it to be Buffy as kind of a … she'd always been a big fish in a small pond and now she was a big fish in a huge pond. He was very clear on wanting her to feel overwhelmed by her new surroundings as college students often will. And so certain scenes worked very well with that.
The library for example: we'd always had scenes in the high school library, which was their stomping ground, their own little Mecca. They're very much the Scooby headquarters and they even did a joke about it where, I think in the second season, a kid came in looking for a library book...
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: And Xander said "What are you doing here?"
Doug Petrie: Yeah, "What the hell are you doing here?" and that won't fly any more, you know. You're in the university library and it's a large, impressive setting. We did a lot of filming at UCLA, a lot of location shooting to really get the sense (that) physically and emotionally Buffy is in a larger arena now and she's not the queen of this arena.
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: Sunday was a great villainess to start the season with.
Doug Petrie: Sunday is one of my all time favourite characters. And of the fans. It's funny, because we've never seen someone kick the crap out of Buffy that badly and have fans complain that she got killed. And it's like, "What did you get rid of her for? We loved her."
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: Are you quite happy to kill your characters off? Does it give them greater resonance if they are expendable?
Doug Petrie: Absolutely, the stakes are higher, it's more dramatic and it keeps the audience (and the writers) on their toes. Personally, I find The Freshman to be one of our most satisfying episodes.
It's a very simple structure: the hero gets in over her head, just gets positively whooped, and then kind of finds her karmic centre, and then comes back and reclaims her territory through violence. The Freshman is one of the most satisfying episodes, because I was genuinely scared and upset that Buffy got her arm nearly broken by this girl and that she, you know...
The funniest thing is that Xander, this goofball who went off to be Jack Kerouac and discover America, never got further than Oxnard, which is about forty miles from where we are. All credit to Joss for that, he's our Yoda.
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: I gather that Nick Brendon couldn't film much of that particular episode because he was working on a film?
Doug Petrie: Yes, I knew that we had limited filming time with Nick so we put him in a very small but pivotal role in that episode. The idea that he's Buffy's higher self and he's a mentor to her was just beautifully handled. He says, "You're my hero, so go ahead: be my hero," and he reminds her of how important she is. I just loved that she went to Sunday's lair and got real violent and said, "Look, I know what I'm doing, I rule this school as much as I ruled the other one and I'm going to kill you now," and she does!
We also did something that I felt was very funny. As she gets staked, the actress playing Sunday (Katherine Towne) put her hands on her hips as if to say "Oh that's annoying..."
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